The Sussex Downs Murder

by John Bude

  “Far the best. Can’t come myself. Busy. But you know the case better than I do. By the way,” added the Chief, “those chaps I sent out to comb through Heath Wood yesterday—they’ve drawn a blank. No sign of the cabin-trunk.”

  “That’s just about what we should suspect,” concluded Meredith as he rose from the chair in front of the Chief’s desk. “Since that confession appears to be a faked job I expect some of the evidence in it is faked too.”

  “Quite. Well, see me later today, Meredith, if you’re any further.”

  Before leaving for Chalklands Meredith went through to another office in a remote corner of the building where a studious-looking young fellow was examining some printed sheets under a microscope.

  “Hullo, Bill. Have I looked in too early?”

  “Can you waste a couple of minutes, sir?”

  “Right,” said Meredith as he hitched himself up on to the edge of a table and watched the young man at work. He had three sheets. One was a page taken from the faked confession. The second was the letter to Barnet. The third a copy of an old statement which had been specially typed by a constable on the Remington from the farmhouse.

  “I’m concentrating on the t’s and h’s and g’s,” explained the young man. “They showed the strongest characteristics in the special copy. The t is weak in the cross-bar and strong in the upright. The h has a very defined upright but the looped bit is very faint. I’ve followed this up in the Barnet letter, sir. There’s no doubt that it was written on this machine.” As he was talking he was at the same time sliding a line of type here and there under the lens of the microscope. “I’m just checking up on the third sheet now.”

  “Well?”

  “The h’s correspond, sir. So do the t’s. But I’d just like to make sure by having a final squint at the g’s.” A minute later he looked up and added: “It’s O.K., sir. The three sheets have come from the same machine. Care to have a look?”

  “Not at the moment, Bill. I’m rushed this morning. Thanks for finding out so promptly. Cheerio.”

  Outside the police-station Hawkins was waiting with the car. Meredith hopped in, warned his chauffeur to hold his tongue during the journey to Chalklands, and settled himself down to a nice bit of comfortable thinking.

  The foremost point in his mind was the fact that Janet Rother was in some way incriminated in the crimes. For all her glib answers to his questions about that parcel, for all the clever suggestions in that faked confession, Meredith now had no doubt that the parcel contained, not a diary and a pile of old correspondence, but a sawn-off portion of John Rother’s body. William must have realized this horrible and gruesome fact, hence his letter to Barnet. And Janet must have known that her husband knew, hence his murder on the cliff-top. So far so good. But surely Janet had not murdered her husband? As an accessory she might be useful, but, however prejudiced her feelings, Meredith could not and would not envisage her as a murderer. Women don’t usually murder a man by hitting him on the head with a blunt instrument. They, as the weaker sex, rely on methods less crude. Their instruments are the automatic and arsenic. They kill, as it were, from a safe distance for fear that their efforts may be foiled by the man’s superior strength. And William had been neither poisoned nor shot. His head had been staved in because it was necessary for the murderer to suggest that he had been killed by a fall from the top of the pit. The question was—

  Meredith’s mental processes stopped with a jerk and shot off in another direction at breakneck speed. The confession. Who wrote it? The author of that confession was the man who murdered John Rother. Must have been. There were too many proved facts incorporated in that false document for it to be otherwise. What the police did know about the time factor this fellow must have known equally well. He knew that the dashboard clock had stopped at 9.55. He knew all about that telegram and William’s journey to Littlehampton. He knew about the inspection-pit in the Chalklands garage. He knew the whole locality inside out. Of course some of this knowledge, the details about Chalklands for example, he could have learnt from Janet Rother. More and more Meredith was inclined to think that she was inseparable from the two crimes. A dreadful indictment, but unavoidable in the light of actual evidence. And surely it was pretty safe to assume that both John and William Rother had been murdered by the same man?

  “Here, not so fast,” Meredith suddenly cautioned himself. “I’m running beyond the known and proven facts. It’s not certain yet that William Rother was murdered. I’ve no direct and indisputable evidence.”

  Out on the sun-baked cliff-top, however, he set about his new investigation with this assumption in mind. Accompanied by Hawkins, he was determined to make a series of new tests which might prove profitable.

  On their way up to the chalk-pit Meredith had borrowed a large sack and a spade from the men working down under the kilns. From the farmhouse kitchen he had obtained one of those weighing-machines fitted with a hook, which one hangs up so that the object to be weighed is clear of the ground. This particular machine was capable of weighing objects up to 14 stone. Fastening the instrument over the stout limb of a beech-tree, Meredith began to fill the sack, which Hawkins held open, with earth and chalk rubble from the top of the cliff. Every now and then he hooked it on to the machine and weighed it. When the pointer indicated 10 1/2 stone he instructed Hawkins to drag the sack along the cliff-path to the point where the wire-fence had been severed. Meredith then made a détour down to the foot of the pit and took up his position a few feet away from where the blackened blood-stains marked the spot where the body had been found. He looked up at Hawkins, who was peering nervously over the edge of the forty-foot drop.

  “Ready, m’lad?”

  “O.K., sir.”

  “Then one, two, three, and swing her out!” called Meredith. “Only for God’s sake don’t forget to leave go!”

  The uniformed figure vanished for a moment, there was a brief pause, and suddenly the loaded sack came hurtling over the rim of the cliff to hit the ground with a sickening crunch a few feet from where the Superintendent was standing.

  Meredith moved forward.

  “O.K.,” he called up. “Just as I expected. Did you have any difficulty?”

  “Once I’d got the swing it was all right, sir. She cleared the lip easily, didn’t she?”

  “Yeah. There’s an overhang just there. Stay there; I’m coming up.”

  Once more on the higher level the Superintendent went down on his hands and knees and began to examine every inch of the ground in the vicinity of the severed wire fence. Hawkins helped him. For ten minutes they worked in silence, cursing inwardly as the sun struck like fire on the back of their necks, wishing there were a bit of shade to shield them from its fierceness.

  Suddenly Hawkins called out:

  “Come here, sir. Quick! I’ve hit on something, I think.”

  Meredith got to his feet in an instant and joined his subordinate.

  “Well?”

  “There.”

  The Superintendent let out a low whistle.

  “Blood, eh? Dried blood.”

  “Looks like it, sir. Of course it’s soaked in a bit, but it’s got that sort of sticky look that dried blood’s got.”

  “Don’t be foul, Hawkins. Sticky. Pah! Here, empty that sack and fetch me the spade, will you? We’ve got to dig out about a foot square of that earth and have it analysed. No good suspecting it’s dried blood. We want the certainty of a laboratory test. Careful does it. Hold that sack open.”

  Although Meredith was adverse to displaying his excitement in front of a subordinate, underneath he was thrilled and immensely satisfied. In a flash he had seen the import of that discovery. Blood at the base of the chalk-pit was one thing. Blood on the top of the pit was another. Blood below—accident or suicide. Blood above—murder! No other interpretation. William Rother had received that fatal gash in the left temple before his
body had gone over the drop. His dead body had been hurled over by the murderer after he had killed his man with some blunt instrument. The 10 1/2-stone sack, roughly equivalent to the weight of the dead man, had fallen plumb on the spot where William had lain. Once prove that the specimen earth contained human blood and the verdict of the Coroner’s jury was a foregone conclusion.

  The blunt instrument? What had the murderer fancied? A spanner? No, something which would render a more jagged wound than that. Almost instinctively Meredith glanced around. Flints. Why not? The ground was strewn with great jagged flints peculiar to that locality. Surely a flint would answer the murderer’s purpose better than anything? No wonder the wound was innocent of chalk-dust!

  Sending Hawkins to the car with the earth-filled sack, Meredith returned to the farmhouse with the weighing-machine. He had other inquiries to make there.

  Kate Abingworth, a less lively matron than on the day when Meredith had first met her, was turning the handle of the milk-separator. She seemed lifeless and doddery and little inclined to chatter.

  “Can I have a word?” asked Meredith politely.

  “Oh dear! Oh dear, surr. I’m all behind’ and as ’tis. But if you must you must I suppose. There’s no gainsaying the pleece. What would you be wanting to know?”

  “You remember that typewriter I borrowed? Who used it?”

  “Mister John and Mister Willum. Business and so forth they used it for, surr. Mostly Mister Willum.”

  “You’ve never seen anybody else use it?”

  “Never!”

  “Mrs. Rother, for example?”

  “Never, surr.”

  “And as far as you know the typewriter has never been taken off that table during the last few months?”

  “It has not,” averred Kate Abingworth with conviction. “Seeing as I make a point to flick my duster over it every morning, I ought to know.”

  “Did you notice if Mr. William had used it at all during the last few days?”

  Mrs. Abingworth heaved a sigh, somewhat constrained by her corsets.

  “Day afore he met his death, surr. He was a-sitting there as large as life tapping away as if ’ee ’adn’t a care in the world. Poor man. Little did ’ee know, eh? Little did ’ee know.” And Kate Abingworth shook her greying hairs as if censuring all the pain and wickedness which walks the world. “A letter all about the Flower Show it was. ‘Kate,’ he ses, ‘I’m going a-Tuesday to sit on that there Flower Show Committee in place of poor Mister John. Now, what’s your ’umble opinion,’ he ses, ‘about the cockernut-shy? Shall we or shall we not?’ You see, surr, ’ee knew as there was a lot of strong feeling down in the village about the shy. The young folk reckoned as we should move with the times an’ have a shooting-alley instead. They reckoned a cockernut-shy was only fit for childers an’ such. O’ course I don’t go for to say myself—”

  But at this point Meredith, realizing that the housekeeper’s verbal restraint was only skin-deep, hastened to change the subject. He knew all he wanted to on that point.

  “Mrs. Rother laying down?”

  “Gone to Lunnon, sir, to see ’er solicitor.”

  “I see. Thanks.”

  As he went round to where Hawkins was waiting with the car he thought: “Mrs. Rother must have written that confession. She’s the only one, besides Mrs. Abingworth, who has had access to the machine.”

  After the inquest he would have to have another talk with that particular young lady. It was obvious now that she was by no means as innocent as she appeared. It was not a principle of his to be led astray by a pretty face and a charming manner. Many a girl like that was just a—Now, what the devil was that bit from Shakespeare? About the apple. Ah—“a goodly apple rotten at the core”. Well, Janet Rother might quite easily be rotten at the core. Quite a number of pretty girls were criminals, though actually the type Meredith had come across were usually brazen and cunning with it. In the meantime the really blank page in his chapter of evidence was that dealing with the Cloaked Man.

  Meredith grinned absent-mindedly to himself as he got into the car and muttered: “Lychpole—down in the village.” The Cloaked Man. His grin broadened. Quite a Sexton Blake touch about that! On the other hand that’s all they knew about this particular man—that he wore a cloak and a broad-brimmed hat on the night of July 20th. Thin data at the best of times when it came to unearthing the fellow’s identity. Perhaps Barnet might know of somebody with a grudge against the whole Rother family. Perhaps in the past the Rothers had done this man or his family some injustice. It was worth making an inquiry now that it was practically certain that the second brother had been murdered.

  But Barnet was not particularly helpful. He knew very little about the Rothers’ private lives. He had already primed Meredith with their local doings and explained the part their ancestors had played in the formation and upkeep of the parish when they were virtually Lords of the Manor; but over the Rothers’ more recent relationships he was hazy. He had an idea that John had friends in Brighton and that it had been his habit to run over there for week-ends. During the last eighteen months he had more often than not spent his week-ends away from Chalklands. But he was reticent over his private affairs. Barnet doubted if either Janet or William had the slightest inkling where he had stayed on these occasions.

  Meredith automatically noted these facts, but he placed little value on them as a means of tracing the identity of the Cloaked Man. He concluded his interview with the crime writer by airing his grave doubts as to the possibility of William having committed suicide, and left Barnet in a puzzled and unhappy frame of mind.

  The following morning at eleven o’clock the Coroner’s inquest on the body of William Rother was held in the spacious kitchen of the farmhouse. Chairs had been ranged round the well-scoured deal table—a massive wheelback presiding in the place of honour at the head. In this, punctual to the minute, the Coroner took his seat and cast a look round at the solemn faces of the jury. Five minutes earlier they had clumped over the flag-stones of the courtyard, dressed in their Sabbath clothes, murmuring in lowered voices, investing the commonplace proceedings with an ecclesiastic air. To Mr. Oyler, the Coroner, this was merely another inquest. To the jury, recruited from the village, it was an occasion for reverence and a ritualistic correctness in the carrying out of their duties. In the background, snuffling quietly into an apron, sat Kate Abingworth, and beside her pale, restrained, yet unflinching in the face of the ordeal which awaited her, Janet Rother awaited her call as witness.

  The proceedings unwound with clocklike precision. In a low, even voice Janet Rother gave formal evidence of identity and went on to describe how she had discovered the body of her husband at the foot of the chalk-pit. The Coroner asked her a few brief questions. Had her husband ever mentioned suicide? She shook her head.

  “When you discovered the body, Mrs. Rother, how far was it from the base of the cliff?”

  Janet hesitated, appeared to be considering the matter for a moment and then announced: “Six feet, perhaps. I really can’t say for sure.”

  “Quite. In what attitude had your husband fallen, Mrs. Rother?”

  “On his side.”

  “Which side?”

  “His right side.”

  “So his left side was uppermost?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was there any serious wound visible on his person?”

  “Yes—in his left temple.”

  “In your opinion, Mrs. Rother, did it look as if your husband lay exactly as he had fallen?”

  Again the girl hesitated. It seemed to Meredith, who was watching her closely, as if she were hastily trying to weigh up the import of the question in order to answer it in what she considered to be the most advantageous manner.

  “Yes,” she said at length. “I think it looked like that.”

  Dr. Hendley was the next witness. Bluff and blust
ering, he brought to his evidence all the ponderous weight of his own learning. He was out, quite obviously, to impress on the Coroner the fact that a village doctor was not necessarily slow-witted or a reactionary. Although the majority of country-folk were fools he was the golden exception. Death, he explained, had been due to loss of blood from the wound in the temple and, in his opinion, instantaneous. There was no doubt that some jagged object, probably a chalk boulder or a flint, had actually penetrated the brain. Questioned by the Coroner, he was emphatic in his denial that the deceased could have turned over once he had struck the ground. No, he could not say that he had noticed any chalk particles adhering to the dried blood about the wound.

  “And the body was in the position as described by Mrs. Rother?” demanded the Coroner with an insistence which rather puzzled the jury. “Please consider this point carefully.”

  “It was,” boomed Dr. Hendley, with a defiant glare at the expressionless faces of the jury, as if daring them to contradict him.

  “Thank you, Dr. Hendley. You can stand down,” said the Coroner with a faint smile. “Superintendent Meredith.”

  Meredith gave a half-salute and jumped to his feet amid the excited murmurs of the villagers. Even respect for the dead could not curb their natural curiosity in a man whose job it was to bring thieves and murderers to justice. The glamour of the professional detective still had the power to draw forth their rustic respect and admiration. Meredith was a novelty, like the annual fair, and they were determined to enjoy him as much as the solemnity of the occasion allowed.

  With the clarity and ease of a man who is used to giving evidence, Meredith described how he had examined the body and noted the absence of chalk dust around the wound. Deceased, he explained, had been lying on his right side about five feet from the base of the pit. There had been considerable loss of blood, judged by the stains which had soaked into the chalk rubble about the dead man’s head. The wire fence on the edge of the pit had been cut and a pair of pliers were found a few feet from the path. A confession had been found in the pocket of the dead man, purporting to have been typewritten by him, but since proved by the police to have been faked. The confession referred to the death of the deceased’s brother. It was the opinion of the police that the document had been placed in the dead man’s pocket in order to mislead them as to the manner in which William Rother had met his death.